It’s as if, the prelate said, our government “had planted a sign on the border with a message painted on both sides. The one that faces south says, ‘help wanted’; the side that faces north reads, ‘no trespassing.’”

That official ambivalence, particularly toward undocumented migrants, remains at the heart of our fumbling inability to resolve this worsening situation with the sort of humane and economically rational policies comprehensive immigration reform could provide. And, with each passing day of dithering inaction, our Janus-faced immigration politics are worsening the crisis surrounding the more than 57,000 unaccompanied children, most of them from violence-ravaged Central America, who have managed to cross the U.S. border without papers this year. Once again, it’s as if there were two ongoing crises: On the one hand, there are those religious leaders and elected officials — notably Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris — who see a deepening humanitarian and refugee crisis in progress; on the other, are those politicians who perceive nothing more than another opportunity to score partisan points with their frightened and nativist constituents.

It is the latter view that has paralyzed congressional attempts to compromise on some version of President Barack Obama’s request for an emergency $3.7 billion appropriation to allow authorities to cope with the child immigrant crisis. The Republican bloc in the House and Senate is having none of it and is demanding a draconian revision — or even suspension — of the 5-year-old anti-human trafficking law, which provides extra legal protection to undocumented children apprehended north of the border. (That statute, by the way, was approved by all but two GOP members of Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush.)

Democrats, human rights advocates and religious leaders are nearly unanimous in opposing suspending or gutting the anti-trafficking law. Such a course essentially would allow immigration agents to adjudicate a child’s status at the border, and Harris summed up the principled opposition to it in Los Angeles this week, when she told an interviewer: “Anything that is meant to streamline a system for the sake of speed, as opposed to the sake of justice and due process, is something I cannot support.”

Meanwhile, across the country, the haters and political opportunists are doing their best to grab partisan capital. In Michigan, one Republican legislator introduced a measure to cancel the state license of any social service agency that assists or shelters the child migrants. Even so, the title of opportunist-in-chief had to go to a GOP presidential hopeful, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who announced he was sending 1,000 members of his state’s National Guard to the border.

Anti-immigrant hardliners applauded, but Texans dealing with the crisis on the ground were underwhelmed, wondering precisely what help he guard can be since it’s restricted to observing and can’t make arrests. Cameron County Sheriff Omar Lucio told the Dallas Morning New, “I don’t know what good they can do.” The sheriff told the Houston Chronicle, “The National Guard is trained in warfare. They’re not trained in law enforcement. This is not a war. This is people asking for help.”

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Those who see the current influx of children as a humanitarian crisis, analogous to that of war refugees, include not just immigration advocates, but also an unusually broad ecumenical swath of religious leaders across the country, including Texas — where most of the crossings are occurring — and the Southwest. Rabbi Asher Knight of Dallas’ Temple Emanu-El was one of more than 100 religious leaders from that city who met to discuss ways to assist the migrants. “We’re talking about whether we’re going to stand at the border and tell children who are fleeing a burning building to go back inside,” he told the New York Times. Knight went on to say that some members of his congregation were comparing the influx of immigrant children to the Kindertransport, the effort to spirit Jewish children out of Nazi Germany and into Britain.

After leading a visit of his denomination’s officials to a migrant shelter in San Antonio, Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, described the situation as “a crisis, and not simply a political crisis, but a moral one. ... The anger directed toward vulnerable children (by anti-immigrant groups) is deplorable and disgusting. The first thing is to make sure we understand these are not issues; these are persons.”

Though retired, Mahony continues to comment with clarifying precision on immigration issues. Immediately after a crowd of nativist agitators were allowed to block buses carrying immigrant children to a shelter in Murrieta, he posted this on his personal blog: “I was embarrassed for us as Americans to watch throngs of angry and venomous people yelling and screaming at the three buses bringing women and children who had arrived at our southern border to a safe haven in Murrieta, Ca. The jeers and taunts were the kind normally hurled at those convicted of heinous crimes, such as homicide and assault. But not at innocent children, and some frightened mothers ... Sadly, these children have become political pawns in the unending national debate over immigrants and immigration reform ...

“We desperately need the national debate on our broken immigration system, and the inadequate laws and regulations now on the books. But don’t put helpless children in the middle of it, and don’t blame the children for the larger mess.”

New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan struck an angrier note on his personal blog: “I watched with shame,” he wrote, “as an angry mob in southern California surrounded buses filled with frightened, hungry, homeless immigrants, shaking fists, and shouting for them to ‘get out!’ It was un-American; it was un-biblical; it was inhumane. It worked, as the scared drivers turned the buses around and sought sanctuary elsewhere.

“The incendiary scene reminded me of Nativist mobs in the 1840’s, Know-Nothing gangs in the 1850’s, and KKK thugs in the 1920’s, who hounded and harassed scared immigrants, Catholics, Jews, and Blacks.”

Neither Mahony nor Dolan could be more right. In the matter of the child immigrants our legal advocates and religious leaders are speaking to us in the accents of our American nature’s better angels. If we ignore them, we will painfully be made to remember just how beastly our politics can be when opportunism tramples conscience.

Tim Rutten is a columnist for the Los Angeles News Group. ruttencolumn@gmail.com.